Performance art: Best practices for B2B marketing organizations

From both a personal and a business perspective, 2020 will be remembered as a challenging year, with the global pandemic frequently being labeled a black swan event. As organizations work to reinvent their product, channel, and demand strategies in the midst of uncertainties, disruptions, and changing customer needs, marketing leaders need to rethink approaches to best practices for B2B marketing.

Now more than ever, B2B marketing leaders must be agents of change,
not advocates for a comfortable status quo.

The question is: How do we re-calibrate our B2B marketing strategy to ensure its continued relevance?

Essential to this re-calibration is a reset of business outcomes. This involves shifting from a relentless focus on growth and efficiency to perhaps a greater focus on resilience and agility, so as to not just withstand future shocks but to take advantage of the unique opportunities afforded by these events.

The show must go on: Performing (and excelling) under pressure

To thrive in an increasingly complex and continuously shifting B2B marketing landscape and emerge stronger, equal parts agility and resilience is the recipe for success for marketing leaders.

Finance leaders also see a silver lining in the current situation: 72 percent believe the resiliency and agility they have built in the throes of the current crisis will make the company better in the long term, according to PwC’s CFO Pulse Survey.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, agility and resilience was a hot topic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the need for B2B marketing leaders to be able to weather major, unforeseen disruption. Marketing agility and resilience were desirable, but are now essential.

B2B marketing leaders are racing to embed agility and resilience in their strategic plan – and the context of those items have evolved in a rapidly changing climate.

While both marketing agility and resilience remain two critical sides of the same coin for leading through uncertainty, marketing leaders need a different framing to inform strategies that focus on outcomes of B2B marketing transformation, particularly to increase adaptability, flexibility, and speed.

Shine on: Best practices for B2B marketing organizations

We must shift our focus to develop capability in marketing agility and resilience in times of disruption – this transition will become a competitive advantage for B2B marketing leaders who want to build the right backbone to transform B2B marketing at scale.

As the race to reinvent B2B marketing gathers pace, new research reveals that the success strategies in embedding agility and resilience in marketing plan have given first movers the edge in the fast-changing B2B marketing landscape.

Following are four best practices for B2B marketing organizations: 

1. Sharpen digital disciplines. We believe we are at a digital inflection point, where B2B marketing going forward will look fundamentally different – B2B marketing landscape is increasingly reflecting the 24/7 consumer world where customers are expecting speed and accuracy, and getting accustomed to remote and digital interactions. Marketing leaders are embedding data and technology throughout their organizations and developing digital marketing best practices to understand customers at scale and deliver personalized digital experiences to their customers.
2. Build adaptability as a way to prepare. A key factor in resilience is adaptability, and marketing leaders are rethinking adaptability as a way to prepare. They are focused on developing an adaptive strategy that enable them to respond as events unfold, particularly to align to existing marketing scenario planning or develop scenarios focused on triggers that can uniquely affect marketing such as cancellations of sponsored events and disruptions to supply chains that delay product launches. We think the central metaphor of adaptability is like a living organism: nimble, responsive and empowered to shift its shape in response to the changing environment – carefully balance preparing for the unexpected and thoughtfully rethinking the present.
3. Balance stable and dynamic marketing practices. Marketing leaders are modernizing their marketing practices towards a convergent, equilibrium point of stable and dynamic marketing practices that enable speed and responsiveness on the dynamic part, while maintaining efficiency and reliability on the stable part. Marketing leaders are rethinking how to deliver speed and be nimble in planning and executing integrated marketing campaign such as reviewing campaigns immediately prior to launch for relevance today, and reviewing pre-programmed and in-flight campaigns and programs.
4. Increase focus on current customers. Marketing leaders are reprioritizing on current customers and placing a greater focus on account-based engagement and lifecycle marketing. With the adoption of subscription-based business models, along with the trust that buyers place in their peers’ recommendations and opinions, they are placing greater investment on creating personalized and integrated pre- and post-sales customer experiences. That means recalibrating investments to focus on retaining the most valuable customers, marketing to them more effectively, and leveraging their connections to attract lookalike audience.